


Wonder That's Keeping The Stars Apart

by kashmir



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-07
Updated: 2007-10-07
Packaged: 2017-10-09 02:23:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/81939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kashmir/pseuds/kashmir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John has trouble expressing how he feels about Rodney.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wonder That's Keeping The Stars Apart

**Author's Note:**

> Beta-ed by [unamaga](http://archiveofourown.org/users/unamaga). &lt;33
> 
> This is pretty damn embarrassing but please don't hold it against me. =\

It's been a rather uneventful week for Rodney. It seems the Pegasus Galaxy has run out of new and inventive ways to try and kill them; well, for this seven day span anyway.

Rodney has taken this seldom seen opportunity and has spent the time holed up in his lab with Zelenka and trying not to think about John and how differently he _could've_ been spending his week. If he could only learn to keep his damn mouth shut, he thought to himself as he sat in front of his laptop. The latest series of Doctor Who was playing but he had no idea what was going on, could only think of how _obvious_ that the Colonel hadn't needed or wanted to hear what Rodney had to say by the way he was avoiding him

He snorts derisively at himself and queues the episode back up to start over. Just as the theme music starts to blare from his computer's speakers, he realizes someone's at his door, that the noise he can hear isn't the music from the show but rather his door chimes. He pauses the show and gets up, padding softly to his door and feels his mouth form a tiny 'o' of shock when he sees Sheppard on the other side, looking like Rodney felt and clutching a tiny, worn piece of notebook paper.

Rodney shakes his head, wonders if the dim lighting in the halls is wreaking havoc with his eyesight. He could swear the Colonel's hands are shaking. Which is impossible because not even when flying one of the 'jumpers into certain death had his hands, or his resolve, ever shaken.

Rodney looks up to meet John's eyes, puzzled as to what exactly is going on. John clears his throat just then and starts to speak. His voice quavers as he reads what Rodney recognizes as a poem, one he vaguely knows from somewhere. But that's not important. What's important is that John is reading this poem to _him_, hands and voice unsteady. Maybe, maybe Rodney hadn't screwed everything up the other night when they'd been wrapped together, bodies damp with sweat and come and saliva, when he'd been half asleep and had whispered those three little words into the resilient skin of John's shoulder. Even though John had been gone from Rodney's bed before he'd woken and had been scarce ever since, their exchanges limited to barely there grunts of 'hello' and 'how are you' before Rodney had buried himself in his work. Maybe everything was going to be okay.

He realizes, as John hands him the tattered piece of paper which he accepts with his damp, weak hands, that Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard _loves_ him, Doctor Rodney McKay. He stands there and stares down at the square of white in his hands, John's messy scrawl crowding its surface. His ears are ringing but through the noise and over the rampant beat of his heart, he registers the sound of John's boots striding down the hallway, away from him and towards the transporter.

That spurs him into action, has him scrambling in John's wake and barely catching him just as he's stepping inside.

"Col-John, wait," he gets out, a little out of breath. John stops but doesn't turn around and Rodney squeezes his shoulder. "Come back to my quarters so we can... talk about this."

John turns around, his face still mostly unreadable but there are cracks there now, crevices where Rodney can see the same uncertainty he's felt churning in his gut leaking through. He lets out a breath he thinks he's been holding for seven days and takes John's hand and then leads him back to his room.

Once the doors slid closed behind them, Rodney cups John's face and kisses him, slowly, wetly, hands running hotly down his sides and then up under his black tee shirt. John makes a small whimpering sound into Rodney's mouth before he fists his hands in Rodney's shirt and kisses him back with apparently everything he can't say for himself.

Rodney pulls back after awhile, smiles at the shell-shocked expression John's wearing and how red and slick his lips look.

"I love you," he says, again, just because he can. Because this time he's lucid and he knows he won't wake up alone tomorrow morning and won't spend a whole week wondering if he'd jacked up the best thing in his crazy, hectic life.

John flushes red hot across the apples of his cheeks and presses his forehead into Rodney's. "I, uh. You too."

Rodney chuckles and pulls John towards the bed. "That'll work for now."

 

  


**I Carry Your Heart With Me**

_I carry your heart with me (I carry it in_  
my heart) I am never without it (anywhere  
I go you go, my dear; and whatever is done  
by only me is your doing, my darling)  
I fear  
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) I want  
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)  
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant  
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows  
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud  
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows  
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)  
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)

\- E.E. Cummings


End file.
